Comment by oakesm9
20 hours ago
As someone who lives on a residential street right by a primary school in the UK, the majority of drivers are going over 20mph even at the peak time when there are children everywhere.
While in theory human drivers should be situationally aware of the higher risks of children being around, the reality is that the majority will be in their own bubble of being late to drop their kid off and searching for the first free spot they can find.
the human driver would usually drive more closely to the centerline of such a residential road. If the road is clear ahead i'd drive almost over the centerline of the road having enough clearance between my path and the parked cars for any such "jumper" to be visible long enough for me to react. If there is an opposite traffic i get back strictly into my lane and slow down much more if the parked cars are close and they block sidewalk view, etc.
The autonomous cars have really got more aggressive recently as i mentioned before:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39298290
I'd really like to see the video of the incident.
I have a similar school drop-off, and can confirm that the cars are typically going around 17-20mph around the school when they're moving. Also that yes, human drivers usually do stay much closer to the centerline.
However, Waymo was recently cleared to operate in my city, and I actually saw one in the drop-off line about a week ago. I pulled out right in front of it after dropping my kid off. And it was following the line of cars near the centerline of the road. Honestly its behavior was basically indistinguishable from a human other than being slightly more polite and letting me pull out after I put my blinker on.
> the human driver would usually drive more closely to the centerline of such a residential road
I certainly do this. But asserting that most humans would usually do this? Have you ever actually seen humans drive cars? This is absolutely not what they do. On top of that, they run stop signs, routinely miss pedestrians in blind spots, respond to texts on their phone, or scroll around on their display to find the next song they want to put on.
I vividly recall a shot within a commercial, in which a driver was shown in slow motion, chucking his coffee into the passenger foot well in order to have two hands on the wheel for an emergency. I don’t remember what was about to happen to the car or the world around it. I’m pretty sure that a collision occurred.